What is the love of allah? How should gods love be?
God states in the Qur’an that:
“But those who believe are stronger in love for Allah.” (Al-Baqarah, 2: 165)
Another main purpose for our existence on earth is to love the Lord more than anything else. He has loved us, given us loads of blessings we cannot possibly count; and in return, He wants us to nurture a love for Him that eclipses our love for all things else. He also warns that failure to do so comes with grave consequences:
“O you who have believed…whoever of you should turn back from his religion, know that Allah will bring forth in their place a people He will love and who will love Him…” (Al-Ma’idah, 5: 54)
Another verse alludes to the fact that individuals and societies are destroyed for no other reason than ‘the loss of love’:
“Say, (Muhammad), ‘If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your wives, your relatives, wealth which you have obtained, commerce wherein you fear decline, and dwellings with which you are pleased are more beloved to you than Allah and His Messenger and striving in His cause, then wait until Allah executes His command. And Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient.” (Al-Tawbah, 9: 24)
The Prophet (saw) says that tasting the sweetness of faith depends on three things:
“To love Allah and His Messenger more than anything else, to fear falling into disbelief after having believed more than falling into a pit of fire, and to love and hate only for the sake of Allah.” (Al-Bukhari, Iman, 9, 14; Muslim, Iman, 67)
However, the path of loving God runs through obeying, following and loving the Prophet (saw) deep from the heart, to the point of virtually becoming lost in him. God declares:
“Say, ‘If you love Allah then follow me, so that Allah will love you and forgive your sins. And Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.”[1] (Al Imran, 3: 31)
The below hadith tell us that loving the Prophet (saw) is the prerequisite of true faith:
“By Lord who has my life in His hands, you will not have truly believed until you love me more than your mother, father, children and entire humankind.” (Al-Bukhari, Iman, 8)
God created man to put His greatness and immaculate artisanship on display. Man is indeed a wonder of creation:
“And on the earth are signs for those with strong faith…and in yourselves. Then will you not see?” (Al-Dhariyat, 51: 20-21)
Following the verses that detail the stages of man’s creation, God also says:
“So blessed is Allah, the most beautiful of creators!”[2] (Al-Mu’minun, 23: 14)
Being the wonder of creation, man is God’s envoy on earth and the most honorable of all beings. The Qur’an states:
“And [mention, O Muhammad], when your Lord said to the angels, ‘Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority.’” (Al-Baqarah, 2: 30)
Scholar Ismail Hakki Bursawi interprets ‘being God’s envoy’ as follows:
“Allah is saying ‘I will adorn man with some powers of My Own; from My will and attributes. He will exercise some authority over other beings as my proxy. He will implement My law on My behalf. Nevertheless, he will not be the master; he will not exercise that authority for his own, personal interests. Man will use his will to implement My will, his command to implement Mine and execute my law. Those who come after him, will take over the duty, which is when the mystery of ‘And it is He who has made you successors upon the earth’ (Al-An’am, 6: 165) shall be revealed.” (Quoted from Elmalili Hamdi Yazir, Hak Dini Kuran Dili, I, 299-300)
Man is endowed with a distinct quality and potential to reach God, which even the angels envy. The Qur’an says:
“We have certainly created man in the best of stature.” (Al-Tin, 95: 4)
- God created man to make his divine names appear more vividly.
Also pointing to that are the Prophet’s (saw) words, “Endow yourselves with the morals of Allah” (Al-Munawi, al-Ta’arif, p. 564). Among all beings, the divine names appear the most in man. Because the negative names of God do not transpire in angels, they do not have the barrier of the ego to deal with either. However, man does. Only man has the potential to overcome the ego and reach God. It is why he has been appointed God’s envoy.
That also explains why the finest human being, the Prophet Muhammad (saw), was able to go beyond the Sidra Tree at the end of the seventh heaven, when even the finest angel, Jibril, could not.
Aziz Mahmud Hudayi gives wonderful voice to man’s journey on earth and his eventual return to the Lord:
We were burnt by timeless love
And fly around the eternal blaze
We glided from the land of one,
To the land of many, we came to gaze,
We passed through many worlds and more
And stopped at the world of man to stay
Our mortal bodies have now long died
We have swum to the sea, the drops left behind
Nothing we have is worthy for He
Except that, His grace we hope to find
To embrace forever till eternity
And it is His mercy we have in mind
In the end to pass the world of many
For privacy with the One of His kind
We simply need to be constantly aware of the reason why we are here.
[1]. Ghafur: He who forgives all sins. Rahim: He who pardons sinners and awards believers in the afterlife.
[2]. Even though the Arabic word ‘to create’, which is ‘khalq’, means to invent something and can sometimes be used for other beings, calling God ‘the most beautiful of all creators’, does not mean God is the better creator among a pool of others. In this matter, Allah (jj) is alone. For example, if Ali is the ‘best student’ in his class, that does not mean there are other students in the same class, who do well in school but not quite as good as Ali. We can call Ali the best student, even if he is the only good student in his class.
Source: The History of Prophets in Light of The Qur’an, THE CHAIN OF PROPHETS, Osman Nuri TOPBAŞ,Erkam Publications
